Hello all!
January was a wild ride. First, it started off with some great news- I was told that my eyes were officially in remission for a full year, with the possibility of not needing surgery again.
As soon as I heard this news, I started to cry. So much of last year was spent in shock that I was really better, and then, eventually, believing that I was safe, both emotionally but in my body as well.
With my good news, I decided to leave the cold of New York and go to stay at an eco village in Costa Rica called Pachamama. It had been recommended by a few people I knew, and while there were some events that seemed questionable and sort of cult-y (they have something called the “white night” where everyone dresses in all white and sits with ayahuasca In the jungle. They really needed a new name for that.) But still, I wanted to give it a try.
They had a good reputation for being an intentional community, and finding a community like this is something I’ve always had a lot of curiosity about. I liked that they were eco-friendly and self sustaining in nature. They had ecstatic dance and meditation every day, and I was excited to feel inspired by being around other like minded people. The truth is, I’ve always been intrigued by the commune life. I like the idea of community coming together and supporting one another, when you can often feel isolated living in cities day to day. My fascination first started when I was 15 years old and I went with my mom to a Grateful Dead concert.
As we were leaving, a woman handed me a zine in the parking lot. I took it home and devoured the whole thing from cover to cover. It blew my young mind. Everything they wrote about - togetherness, love for one another, creating a meaningful life - sounded so beautiful. I realized a big part of me had been craving this. I emailed them the next day, telling them how much I loved their writing. They responded, thanking me and telling me I could visit them and stay at their commune in upstate New York! Everyone contributed according to the industry they were assigned, and there was daily sing each morning. They just needed my parent’s permission for me to join, seeing as I was minor.
I remember sitting across from my parents in the kitchen, telling them what I had discovered. “I know it sounds crazy, but what if I went there and explored it, like an investigate journalist?!” I had written a few articles for my high school newspaper, and thought I was ready for the challenge. My parents did not think so, however. It was out of the question.
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Life went on, but my fascination with communes always lingered in the back of my mind. So, when I was told about Pachamama, I decided to finally give it a shot and see what it was like. I had wanted to visit two years ago, but this was at the height of my health issues. A friend didn’t think that going somewhere in the middle of the jungle was such a good idea when my immune system was so fragile. And I agreed with her. But now, I was stronger. I was in remission, baby! I wanted to use this newfound freedom to do everything I always felt too afraid to do because of my health.
Soon enough, I was headed to Costa Rica! I always get very anxious around transitions, but as soon as I arrived, I was excited for this new place, where I could feel more in touch with everything I love. I put down my bags, and immediately went to go dance barefoot!
Things were good! And then, slowly, they took a turn…
But first, a little history on the place, which I learned about the more I stayed there. Pachamama was founded in 1999, by an Israeli man named Tyohar. You can stay there as a resident full time, and pay membership fees, work there for several months (you need to commit to a 2 month minimum) or visit for a few weeks. You could be there for two weeks, or two years. The place itself spanned 500 acres (it was originally a cattle farm), but you spent most of your time in “downtown,” where they have a dining hall, a cafe, and a few spaces for workshops and yoga. There was meditation every night at 6:30pm in Osho Hall (yeah, Wild Wild Country Osho) with a giant photo of him hanging up on the wall. Before I left, I was not sure how much they followed him, but they ended up having tarot cards inspired by him in the cafe, and instructors there had even become Osho sannyasins in Pune in 1988, after Osho was deported back to India.
The first few days were pretty disorienting and it felt hard to adjust. The heat was so intense I felt like I had a weight bearing down on me, along with horrible brain fog. They had no coffee there, so I was having bad headaches from caffeine withdrawal. And while I thought I’d hit it off with many people there, I found myself feeling quite uncomfortable. Most times I sat down at a table to talk to someone, they were either sitting in silence, or asking to be alone. It seemed like everyone was going through such intense inward journeys that socializing and connecting felt much more secondary.
Which was fine! I understood quickly that a lot of people went there to work on themselves above all else. But I guess it made this community feel a lot more centered around the individual. I started to get exhausted from making an effort to meet people and then constantly get shut down. It was like being the new kid at “spirituality summer camp,” but something just felt off. I told myself to give it time. It had only been a few days, and people were living here for years. Maybe I was too impatient.
I decided to take a workshop called “Authentic Embodiment.” It was only two days, but offered different somatic exercises to be able to listen to the body and process emotions and trauma that can get stuck.
Sometimes with a class like this, I get terrified because I have so much trauma in my body I know I’m only just beginning to fully process, and I’m scared to see what will come out if I really open up. But some of the tools they taught really helped me tap into my body. I spent so much of my life ignoring my body, and trying to disassociate so I wouldn’t have to face my disease. But now it felt good to sit with my body, to try to listen to what it needed.
I felt a lot of grief come up- for abandoning my body when it needed help early on in my diagnosis, but also for feeling abandoned by others because of my disease, both with medical professionals or personal relationships. I felt grief for all the pain and suffering I had been through. But then, deeply grateful. For the ways these experiences have cracked open my heart, pushed me to reach out to friends and family, strengthen my relationships and, and ultimately, put me on this path that values joy, connection and spirituality. But then, at one point a few hours in, the facilitator asked us, “What is your body telling you right now?” And immediately a clear voice said, “Get out of here!” I felt it deep in my bones and it was so intense I started to cry.
But this was my third day- maybe I just felt uncomfortable from being in the heat and around new people? I knew a part of me wanted to go, but I also wanted to give this place a proper chance.
Sometimes, I have a hard time listening to my body unless it gives me a big sign. When I was in Australia in July, I was enjoying being there, but also deeply exhausted. And then, one morning at an ecstatic dance, I sat down to meditate in the grass and fainted. I lost consciousness and was told I started having some sort of seizure. It was only for a minute, but I was pretty shaken by it. This has never happened to me.
I was surrounded by a bunch of hippies who insisted I was having a kundalini awakening! How wonderful! But my first thought was, “Oh fuck, what if this is the MS?” I tried to go to a hospital, but they didn’t have an MRI machine, only an X-Ray machine. I was in Byron Bay, and it’s a pretty small town. In fact, they told me they had no specialists there at all. Just general physicians. Coming from New York where you can throw a stone and hit a specialist for just about anything, I couldn’t believe it. I realized then that this was my body telling me to go home. A week later, I went to New York. When I did get an MRI, they told me my lesions had spread to my spinal cord. The fainting might not have necessarily been related to the MS, but if that hadn’t happened, I don’t think I would have left and caught the lesions early enough to start treatment. I didn’t want to leave it to that point ever again.
Then, things at the commune started to get weird. The next day, I got on the shuttle to go to the beach. I sat next to a guy who who told me he was going to meet up with a friend who was just at Pachamama. “So, now she’s just living nearby?” I asked. “Well, yeah,” he replied. “Because she was asked to leave.”
Immediately, alarms went off. What would you need to do to be kicked out? “She wrote a Facebook post, and it was political.” I asked what exactly he meant by “political,” and he said he did not ask because he didn’t think it was his place.
The rest of the day, I was disturbed by this. At dinner, I sat with a couple who had been there for months. I asked if they knew anything. It turned out, they both knew two separate people who had been kicked out. So this was happening rather often. One was for criticizing Pachamama and writing ways they should improve their ways. And another was apparently for “having a breakdown” because they needed WiFi and started yelling at everyone. There was no WiFi anywhere on the property except at one designated Internet hot spot at the top of the hill, or if you paid extra for a room with WiFi. I wasn’t sure what to make of this, but my first thought was - how free could this community be if there was no room for freedom of speech or space for criticism?
The longer I stayed, I asked around about the nearby town, Nosara. Did people like it there? Some would often go for day trips and I was looking for recommendations. But the resounding response was always that once I left, I’d come running back. “You have everything you need here!” Being there made you feel like you could stay in this “safe” world for as long as you wanted (or were willing to pay), and everything would be taken care of. But you were also cut off from reality. One man I met visited, intending to stay for a few days. He ended up staying two years, and now has a house here.
The following day, I was walking to breakfast when I fell. The terrain is pretty steep and rocky, so people slip fairly often. My knee was bloody but not too bad. I went to the main office and asked where first aid was located. They told me that I could go to the cafe and get a band aid there. Luckily; it was just a scrape, but out of curiosity I asked, “But what if this was worse, or an emergency? Where do I go then?”
As someone with bad medical issues for the past ten years, and especially while traveling, I want to always know where the nearest doctor is at all times, like being aware of the emergency exit rows on an airplane. Hopefully you won’t need it, but it’s good to be aware. They told me that the closest doctor was in Nosara, a bumpy 40 minute drive away. “But hypothetically, what if there was an emergency here?” I insisted. The front desk lady stared at me. “That doesn’t happen. It’s not necessary.” I walked away, incredulous. This place has been running for 24 years, tucked away in the jungle. I found it hard to believe that in all this time, they never once had an emergency.
Later that afternoon, I took a shuttle to the nearby beach when I saw a man rolling a cigarette underneath a tree. I asked him if he was living at Pachamama, and he nodded. He had been living there for 15 years. I told him I had one question for him. Has there ever been a need for a doctor or nurse, or any kind of infirmary? He was surprised by my question, but shook his head. “We have all the herbs we need to help someone.” I nodded. “Okay, but there was never once an emergency?” He paused. “Well, yes,” he said. “A woman died.” My stomach dropped.
“It was six years ago. She had an allergic reaction. It was very sad.” I was in shock. This is something that would be very avoidable, if there was medical assistance on the premises. “And even after someone died, there was no motivation to get a doctor or nurse?” I asked. He shrugged. “At first yes, but then it lost momentum and never happened.”
Around now, I was starting to panic a little. I thought back to the form they made you sign when you checked in, stating that Pachamama was exempt from any liability in the case of death, injury, and anything in between. It was one of the most intense forms I’ve ever signed, and made me very uncomfortable. But now I was starting to understand why. They had nothing in place to help people; so they needed to protect themselves. I started feeling deeply unsafe being there, and wondered how they would react if I was hurt.
At this point, about a week and a half had gone by. I had made some nice friends. Alexandra, a documentary filmmaker from Spain. Iryna, a woman from the Ukraine I had met in the taxi from the airport. And Maya, from New Zealand. We all woke up one morning for sunrise and went to see baby turtles hatch on the beach.
It was breathtaking, and we helped guard the babies from the nearby birds and dogs trying to eat them so the baby turtles could make it safely into the water. The local conservancy guide told us how turtles eggs were very valuable here and eaten as an aphrodisiac. So people will come and try to steal them from the beaches and he will report them. One time, to get him to stop protecting the turtles, they burned his house down while volunteers were living in it. They barely made it out alive. But he keeps going. “This is my life,” he said. “I will never stop.”
Between all the “Pachadrama,” as my friend called it, and now the turtle arson, my head was starting to spin. We returned to Pachamama, and it was a little after breakfast when Iryna started looking very pale. She mentioned feeling not great from maybe some food or water she had the night before, but now she was really struggling. She slid down to the ground, her eyes closed. I asked her if she was okay. “Don’t worry about me, just go on, I’ll be fine. If I faint here on the road, I’m sure someone will find me.”
I have been where she was now- feeling so ill but not wanting to burden someone with it. I crouched down next to her. It was getting hot and already around 92 degrees. “What are you talking about? I’m not leaving you. Let’s get you out of the sun.” We decided Maya would take her to the main office for help, and I’d run to get some activated charcoal for her stomach from my room. It was all I had that I could think of to help her.
When I ran to find them back at the main office, Iryna was lying outside on the bench. I asked what they had done to help her, and Maya pointed to a cup of hot tea. I walked inside and asked for her to be brought into the office where there was air conditioning, but the woman said no. They were worried she could be “contagious” and didn’t want what she had.
I was appalled. “Okay, then can you move her somewhere else where there is shade?” She was camping in a tent, and I thought she needed somewhere she could be out of the heat. The woman told me all the rooms were booked. When I pressed them to find anything, they said there was one room available that had a fan. Then, I realized they wanted to charge her for it. They were discussing all the price options with her as she could barely open her eyes. It was hard to watch. “Shouldn’t you have a place where you can keep people that are ill? Or can’t you change her half the rate at least?” I finally got her down to half, and they told me they would move her. But we had already been waiting out in the sun for an hour. I asked how much longer, and she made a face. “This is Costa Rica, things move slowly here.”
She went back into her air conditioned office, and I sat outside with Iryna. I was still desperate to find her medical attention. At that moment, a man walked by who I knew led the health and wellness workshops. Surely, he could help. I asked him for advice. I was worried she had some bacteria or a parasite. He then proceeded to tell me how everyone has parasites and they are actually helpful.
He turned to Iryna as she writhed in pain. “This is good for you,” he said. “It’s good your body is going through this.” At that point, it was hard to contain my disdain. For someone to be self righteous enough to literally talk down to someone in pain and tell them this was “good for them” was too much. I started getting more aggressive with him that no one was helping her after hours in the heat and he told me he “didn’t like my energy.” Then he walked away.
Iryna and I continued to sit there, waiting. Just then, a woman walked by. I had been in the Embodiment workshop with her the week before. She had just moved here from Boston with her husband and young kids. Because I had reached my breaking point, I said, “If you don’t mind me asking, how did you feel comfortable coming here with your young children knowing there’s no access to medical assistance?” She nodded. “It’s funny you say that. My husband is actually a ER doctor.”
I asked why he wasn’t the official doctor here, and she said that was the plan; but when they got here, they weren’t able to make it happen. No momentum. It was the same story I kept hearing, only now I was starting to see it was not for lack of need or resources. They had plenty of emergencies and a capable doctor right here. It sounded like they would just rather spend their resources on workshops that could make them thousand of dollars, and avoid liability without taking any responsibility for the people in their care.
About thirty minutes later, her husband showed up with his medical kit. “My wife mentioned that you needed me?” This was huge because there was no way to reach him since there was no internet access. I could have cried from relief. He examined Iryna and gave her medication. Two and a half hours later, her room was ready. They took her away, and I felt relieved that she had a safe place to rest and had been treated. But throughout the whole interaction, they berated me for getting their help and being pushy. Rather than showing any kindness or empathy, they only seemed annoyed and inconvenienced. Maya told me how she admired how assertive I was.
But I only learned this from 10 years of being in doctors offices and hospitals, practicing how to advocate for myself by watching my mother advocate for me. And then, harnessing these skills for myself. But it took years, and it was always hard. It still is sometimes. Lots of doctors or people in authority have hated dealing with me because I try to ask questions and hold them accountable. It’s hard to do as a patient, especially when you’re ill. But if I can use these skills to help others, it all feels worth it.
I was almost in tears when it was all done. But I was proud of myself. For helping my friend and standing my ground. I realized then that I had given this place enough of a chance. You can do all the breath work and yoga classes you want, but if you try to call yourself a community, then you need to show some basic humanity and kindness, rather than literally withholding shelter for those in need. To me, the whole philosophy of their intentional community fell apart. I’m not delusional, I know places need to make money to keep running. I also recognize how priviledged I was to be able to go visit at all in the first place. But it all felt so deeply hypocritical. When ego and money are prioritized so much more over common decency, it all feels like a big scam to me.
A few days later, I checked out early and booked a flight back to New York, where I could see all the doctors I wanted! Sure, maybe as someone with multiple autoimmune conditions, this whole experience felt more terrifying to me. But I couldn’t stomach spending any more time and money there. My body was right since the beginning.
The night before I left, when a man asked why I was leaving, I mentioned that one of the reasons was it was hard to think here. It felt like my mind was in mental quicksand. He looked at me and said, “Maybe it’s good for you. Maybe this is your body telling you not to think.”
He had already been living there a few years. And while this had been a fascinating experiment, after hearing a man genuinely tell me to “stop thinking,” I knew it was one I did not want to be a part of anymore.
The next morning, as I was leaving, I found a friend waiting at the main office. They explained how they found a 62-year-old woman who had slipped and fallen, sprained her ankle, and had passed out for 15 minutes from the pain when they found her. She was also fasting for a juice cleanse, and so she was especially weak. She explained how since there was no WiFi to ask for help or stretcher available, three people carried her uphill to her room. Instead of getting medical help for her ankle, a visitor offered her energy healing.
A man listening nearby remarked, “Huh, I just realized, there’s no doctor or anything here. But I guess out of the 300 people here, 20 of us know how to fix a sprained ankle probably. It’s a good test of self-reliance.”
So clearly some people did not mind having no help there. In fact, they were up for the challenge. But I think it’s very different to intellectually like this idea, when in reality, if you’re in pain, you want help. I left because I knew that if anything serious happened to me there, I, too, could be lying in that dirt road for hours and I don’t think anyone would help me, unless I was lucky to have someone I knew walking by.
I hope no one else gets hurt there. But more than anything, I hope they can start taking responsibility and be held accountable so there is finally “momentum” for real medical assistance. They clearly need a way to offer help (if someone is dying, you need to instill change), but instead they are willfully ignoring it out of convenience and masking it as “self-reliance.” But as someone who had to witness first hand others being sick, I think their policy is lazy, cruel, negligent, irresponsible, and purely acting from a desire to make a profit and avoid liability.
I can acknowledge there are positives to this place - the workshops were interesting and a lot of the visiting people I met were very kind. People travel all over the world to be there and it is their home. I don’t want to take away from any of that- experiences like these are so incredibly personal and I’m glad this place has been able to help others.
I didn’t intend to write a piece like this. I was coming from a place of genuine curiosity and optimism, to see what a community would be like in practice, but also to feel more in touch with my inner voice. I hope other intentional communities around the world function differently. But after this experience, I realize that you can’t just drop into a community instantaneously, although it is obviously appealing. You need to make it your own, and it takes work, but it’s worth it. And I had a great community waiting for me in New York. As for my inner voice, it does feel stronger. I’m leaving knowing what I stand for, and being proud of my values. So, the next time my body tells me to do something, I’m going to listen.
In other less dramatic news! Oreo took his first flight this month and is living in LA. He told me he is coming out with his own travel newsletter now, and to watch out…
Also, if you want to know more about my writing workshops in the future and want to be on the mailing list for that, I’ve done a little website revamp and you can sign up here!
Love,
Julia
Oreo is in fact thriving in LA. Today he had an impromptu encounter with his cousin and they bonded instantly. He makes friends everywhere he goes and loves hiking the Santa Monica Mountains. He also loved hearing the News letter.